Jules looked out over the inside of the volcano. “What are those flying creatures?” One of them came closer, becoming the size of an airbus before transforming into a Human as it stepped into Fire’s home. “Dragons?”
“This is the home of the Lady of Fire. Deia is a demigod. The woman who just gave birth is the Lady of Fire that you have heard about in Emerilia. Now that might seem like a lot, but trust me, in a few minutes it will seem like just a minor footnote.” Dave and Deia shared a look before they turned to Jules, their faces serious.
Jules’s face was pale as she looked around the room, sensing the auras from these people. She couldn’t detect them at all! How powerful must they be that I can’t even glimpse at their power?
***
Jules came back to Emerilia, or reality. Bob, who had introduced himself part way through their conversation, stood next to Dave and Deia.
Jules put her elbows on the table, her hands holding her forehead with what she had seen. If anyone heard what I was thinking, they would think I lost my mind! She wanted to ask how this was all possible, but Dave, Deia, and Bob had explained it to her.
Bob was the Grey God, Fire was the Lady of Fire, Deia was her daughter and thus a demigod, Malsour was a Dragon, and she was sitting in the middle of a volcano filled with Dragons.
Well, all of it seemed relatively small compared to what she had learned.
“We were grown in vats, fed a simulation and then told this was a video game when in fact it’s reality. This is some crazy ass Matrix shit.” Jules sat back, her hands going to her legs.
This is real—then the Jukal made up the fact that I lost my legs. Made it up for Dwayne as well. All of the worry I went through, trying to find a solution, a way for me to survive and make money—they created that despair so that I would play this game, just to entertain them! My whole life just to give them some years of entertainment!
She shivered, thinking about the intimate moments that the system might have recorded between her and Esa, or the private moments she had to herself. Everything was tinged, as if it was somehow dirty.
“It’s hard to take in,” Dave said.
“What the hell do I do, now that I know all of this? I can’t tell anyone because, well, then I would seem crazy to the rest of the Players! I can’t try to get away from it, because there has to be a way that the Jukal keep Players from staying around after their cycle. Even if we try to fight them, they’ve stacked everything in their favor!” Jules hadn’t felt this kind of uselessness since she had lost her legs. She felt as if nothing she could do could ever raise her from the low that she was now experiencing.
“We can fight. We can do everything in our power to defeat whatever the Jukal send at us. We defeat these people and creatures that were imprisoned, and we start to fight back against the Jukal,” Dave said.
Jules didn’t say anything for a while. Slowly she smiled. “Well, at least now the mystery of how Deia got pregnant is solved. Was wondering what kind of money it would take for the developers to allow a Player to have a pregnant character.”
Dave and Deia smiled as the two of them looked to each other. One Player, one POE, both of them fighting together to create a better future.
Jules’s fighting spirit filled her as she sighed. “All right, well, seeing as my game is now partly ruined, what can I do to help? It’s time those Jukal got a swift kick in the ass.” Jules smiled.
Inside, she was still scared, confused, and it felt as if the very ground beneath her feet was shifting. But she had picked her path and she would take it to the end.
***
Boran-al was disturbed in his work when his Mirror of Communication pulsed. He moved to the mirror without hesitation, kneeling as he pressed his hand to the mirror.
He left the room that he had been working in and appeared in what looked to be an identical hall to the one that the Dark Lord lived within.
“My lord,” Boran-al said to the floor.
After he had been sent to his new place of study, commanding the Alturarans that the Dark Lord had been able to bring under his command, he had come to understand the kind of power that his lord now wielded.
“Have the divine wells been completed?” the Dark Lord asked, his voice raspy and cold.
“Yes, master. I have completed two and am working on the third,” Boran-al said.
“Good, that will be enough. The champions have completed their preparations and are ready,” the Dark Lord said. “I will activate the secondary portal and send through the divine wells. We will let the forces trapped within the Grey God’s realm escape and come to the fore. Emerilia will succumb to war, with death and destruction ruling over all. When our enemies have weakened one another, we will send forth our forces to claim victory.”
“Yes, master.” Boran-al shivered with excitement, his mind already thinking of the experiments he would do, the torture he would visit upon those who had turned away from the Dark Lord.
“See that the well is sent as soon as it’s charged.” With that, the Dark Lord disappeared from the Mirror of Communication hall.
Boran-al also left. He turned and looked at the soul gem matrix that lay in the middle of the room. Around it were complicated Magical Circuits. They followed the circuits that were created around the Dark Lord’s power well.
Boran-al was the only person other than a god who had been allowed access to see a god or goddess’s divine well.
He had studied and learned the Magical Circuits, as ordered by the Dark Lord. Now, he understood why. They could harvest the power of Alturara. Then Boran-al could ship the charged well to Emerilia, where it could be taken to the Dark Lord’s hall and integrated with his divine well, charging it without the overseers, the rest of the Pantheon, or the people of Emerilia knowing that he had gained so much power.
The divine well was made from multiple interlinked grand soul gems. Together, they could hold the same power as thirty vault soul gems.
With the Alturarans’ devotion toward their new god, the divine well was charging faster than Boran-al had been able to predict and he was working on making the third one. His biggest bottleneck was supplies. The Alturarans had a number of dark materials at their disposal and Boran-al was making soul gems from them, but he needed grand soul gems now.
With the Dark Lord opening the second portal, he would once again be able to easily get the supplies he wanted. Boran-al looked to the other end of his massive workshop. Standing there was a portal.
The first portal was still sitting in the valley filled with Alturarans. The Dark Lord didn’t need them yet, but the Alturarans didn’t need many resources. They moved slowly and could live for thousands of years without fail. More of them gathered by the day and simply waited.
The portal seemed to wake from its slumber. Mana gathered around it as noises came from within the metal circle that would hold the event horizon. There was a clicking noise as more and more power was fed into the portal. The clicking stopped and the building static of Mana seemed to explode.
In a flash of light, the inner area of the portal went from looking at a plain metal wall to looking into a dark cave. Dark creatures wreathed in shadows moved forward, passing through the event horizon and entering Alturara.
These people were the Dark Lord’s trusted champions. They had lived for decades as fighters, assassins, and even emperors, killing hundreds of thousands. All of them were stained with darkness. They reveled in the pain and destruction of others. They would look death in the face and embrace him as an old and familiar friend.
Now they bowed to Boran-al as they saw him move toward them.
“Take this one back to our master. I will have another one shortly.” Boran-al pointed to the almost full divine well.
The largest and strongest moved to obey. A skinny, emaciated-looking man moved to Boran-al. He bowed deeply. His skin looked as though it belonged on a dried-out mummy, his eyes wild and excited.
“Master said that there might be use of our t
alents here in making sure the rest of the Alturarans know their place.” The man’s voice was barely a whisper, but the cold way in which the man talked and the way his eyes flashed in joy made Boran-al smile.
“Go, find the Alturarans that have been raised up to be champions. It will be good to have more of our master’s people here. I am interested in seeing how one might torture these Alturarans. It is something that I have been unable to experiment with.” Boran-al’s voice filled with regret.
“It would be an honor to bring back some of them for your experiments,” the mummy champion said.
Boran-al’s face opened in a wild and hungry smile. Anyone would feel a shudder go through their body at the bloodthirsty and twisted expressions that the two shared.
The strongest of the champions heaved together, picking up the divine well from its magical circle. The circuit was broken but the second divine well a bit away was already starting to glow as it seamlessly took over and started to collect the power that the Alturarans devoted toward their new god.
***
Dave said good-bye to Deia in Per’ush. She needed to go back through the teleport pad there. Otherwise, people might ask questions.
They arrived back in his laboratory. Malsour and Bob went off to work with the array. It was near completion now.
“I’ll talk to you later. I’m going to go see Lucy. This is all a bit much to take in,” Jules said.
“I understand, it’s kind of crazy,” Dave said with a small, reassuring smile.
“Bit of an understatement,” Jules said with a dry laugh.
Dave knew that there wasn’t anything he could do for her right now. Just as he, Suzy, and Lucy had come to understand Emerilia and their homes, so did Jules need the time to understand it all.
Jules waved and headed out of the laboratory.
Dave scratched his head and moved toward the array. If they could get it working, then they would be well on their way to getting some extra fighting power. Also, they could start to miniaturize it so that they could make an easier summoning hall to use, instead of the massive array they had now.
Chapter 17: From Faraway Lands
Suzy sighed and sat back in her chair in an office in the Terra smithy. She had been coordinating deals, helping out Florence and Lucy, dealing with the prisoners, the trades that the Stone Raiders were doing as well as the smithies, factories, and different patents that Dave had put out into the world.
She had been one of the driving forces behind the population boom that was happening in Terra right now, though she had barely been able to see it. She now looked out of the massive window behind her office and looked out over Terra. There were still lots of signs of construction. The mining drills were still at work, cutting out what would be the next section of Terra. People were already asking whether they could rent places there. All of Terra had been rented out. People were moving in supplies still, but the city didn’t seem to stop.
People came in from all over Emerilia at all kinds of times. People came from every continent and kingdom. Terra was the land of neutrality. People had tried to fight here, exercising old rivalries, only to be thrown out. The Stone Raiders made it clear that no one was to fight in the city unless it was in the training arenas. If they started using violence or trying to force people, then their automaton police force run by Shard would deal with them.
Many gangs and black market people had been kicked out for trying to steal or force others to do their bidding.
They didn’t care whether they were gangsters or kings. If they followed the rules, then the Stone Raiders would leave them alone.
Even with the lenient rules, people didn’t argue that the Stone Raiders were weak. It was easy to see, looking at their achievements and this very city, that they were not someone to be taken lightly or annoyed.
There were embassies for nearly eighty percent of Emerilia’s people. Some were there more symbolically than anything, showing off their power, but most were there as a show that they would stand together in the face of whatever tried to harm Emerilia.
Suzy looked at the city, seeing its hustle and bustle, people hawking wares, the vibrations under her feet of weapons being forged or repaired. People trained in arenas as goods and supplies moved through the cities and Aleph automatons patrolled.
There was a knock at her door, ending her thoughts.
“What is it?” Suzy asked with a defeated tone as the door opened to reveal a smiling redhead.
“I’ve come to steal you away from all of this.” Induca moved into the office and closed the door. She leaned against it and looked at Suzy.
“I’ve got lots of work to do though, hon, as much as I would like to spend three days and nights kissing every curve of you,” Suzy purred.
Induca pushed off the door, her hips swaying as she moved toward Suzy. “I’ve always liked women in power, and I’ve always wanted to do it in their office.” Induca said her every word slowly and with care, pushing Suzy’s chair back and turning it so they were facing each other.
Induca’s fingers traced Suzy’s jaw and her lips pressed against hers. Suzy’s heart fluttered as she rubbed her legs together, releasing her control and letting Induca take over.
Induca pulled back and looked into Suzy’s eyes. “Still busy?” Induca’s finger that had been holding her chin now traced down Suzy’s neck.
“Always got time for you.” Suzy’s legs moved slowly as heat spread throughout her, and she bit her lips, excited by the thought of Induca and herself in her office.
“Good.” Induca slid to her knees and pulled down Suzy’s pants.
***
“Where the heck have you two been?” Dave waved his hands, a carver in one and a coded plate in the other.
“Oh, we just had some catching up to do.” Suzy turned slightly and blushed as she held onto Induca’s hand.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to,” Dave muttered to himself as Malsour, who had just come out of the teleportation and gravity array, scratched his head awkwardly. No brother really wanted to know when his siblings had been off with their lover.
“So, Induca wouldn’t tell me what was going on. She just dragged me down here. I have a lot of work to do, you know,” Suzy complained, looking to Dave as if it were his fault.
“Hey! Why do I get blamed for this? Hire more people to take over the work!” Dave whined, not at all in keeping with the heroic stature that someone might think of when hearing the name Dave Grahslagg.
“Not my fault that a lot of people are idiots! Now, what have you been playing around with?” she asked.
“Well, one thing really. Well...kind of two.” Dave waved them over to the room Malsour had walked out of. Runes had been moved around and there was a smooth piece of the floor in the center about twenty meters in diameter.
“I’ve got the Dwarves working to make the components of one thing; Steve is helping me between working on his own project on putting it all together. Then, I’ve finished working on different power sources: we’ve got a Mana well factory at work and a small fusion reactor that I could make more of if I wanted to, but there is simply no reason to do so right now. So, I’ve been focusing on gravity and teleportation manipulation. I can teleport myself pretty well.” Dave disappeared and reappeared two feet to the left, his face looking a bit pale from the Mana usage. “I don’t want to use it much so that people would figure it out. Also, takes a bunch of energy. Though other than that, I’ve got this!” Dave waved at the room.
“And, what is this?” Suzy asked. Unlike the people of Emerilia, she didn’t understand just how impossible teleporting was without a teleport pad or portal. The only people who could do it were the gods and goddesses of the Affinities Pantheon.
Malsour answered first, an eager smile on his face. “Well, there are multiple things at work here. One is your basic summoning circle, which we turned into code. We also made it variable, so that you can now pick and choose which creature you want to summon. Ther
e is also a barrier system, so that the creature can’t escape and cause havoc. Then, there’s also a suppression and simultaneous amplification system, much like how Dave made your staff. It boosts the summoner’s Willpower and makes it easier for them to make a soul binding contract with the summoned creature.”
Suzy looked at it all. It would basically punch holes through space and time, tearing creatures out of Jukal storage and then bring them back to one point and make it easier for the person summoning them to assert their control over them.
“You finally finished it? The summoning hall?” Suzy said, unable to hide her excitement.
“Oh, hell yeah, I did. Though, we need you to test it out. You know the most about the summoner’s lifestyle and you can tell us if anything is going wrong,” Dave said.
Suzy looked at the room with appreciation. She had become a summoner, knowing that she didn’t want to get directly into the fight but provide her friends with close support.
She had thought about walking the path of the pure summoner, breaking open holes between realms to pull a creature to be her servant, or soul binding creatures to her like she had done with Steve. Dave had promised that he would look into summoning so that she could instead walk the path of the creation summoner, imbuing her Willpower into multiple creatures made from various materials that would serve her and boost the fighting abilities of Party Zero. They could hold off the enemy, dealing with lower-level creatures while her party dealt with the bigger threats.
Steve provided support to Suzy and they were close, though she let him roam around and do as he wished. He had a soul binding contract with her, but he was unlike any creature that a summoner might attract. Only extremely high-leveled creatures of legend would be able to communicate with their masters. Although Suzy was impressed with Steve, she wanted another soul-bound summoned creature to increase her defense and in-close abilities. With her summoned creations, they were usually at range, unable to help her.
“Okay, so where do we begin?” Suzy asked.
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